Paul Theroux - O-Zone

The trouble with Holly's seldom being dogmatic was that she seldom sounded serious.

Moura said, "Now I wish I hadn't told you."

"Willis says that kid is nothing but trouble."

"Fizzy's fifteen. He's got huge teeth, long arms, and his hair is already partly gray. He insults Hardy to his face and he calls his mainframe 'Pap.' He does nothing but yawn in my face. And to him I'm an old hag, because I'm thirty-six."

"I was reading about this witch instinct they've discovered in aliens that might be some indicator—"

"I'm not a witch, not a whore, not a mother, not a little girl, and I despise the word 'wife.' I'm a woman!"

The outburst did not startle Holly. She was now dancing slowly and still fastened to the arms of the machine.

"You should act like a woman, then, and be practical about this obnoxious kid of yours."

Sex was the last thing, but it was just like Holly to think of it first. Moura was baffled by her own reaction to Fizzy. As an infant he had been a frail inert creature, and she had loved him — his milky breath, his tiny fingers, the way he slept in a little bundle. He was a part of her, a live thing that had become detached, that still belonged to her. But then he opened his eyes and began to move and make noise, and nothing she did pleased him. She had no power to quiet him. He was the same infant, but a beast, and from the moment she recognized that it had been a battle.

Moura coped by handing him over. It was easy to find school sessions for him — all the agencies wanted to take credit for his genius. But these days when she heard that meaningless word she thought: Who is he?

The schools found him volatile, quick to master anything, but with intelligence to spare — it brimmed in him, and he used it to mock the teachers, and he mocked the work they gave him, too. The work he found easy, it was thin he said, there was not enough of it. He said, "Everybody knows this!" He laughed his unsmiling laugh. The school authorities said that he was like a certain kind of computer that could perform well only when a wise operator was driving it. They could not master his operations.

But Moura did not see him as a special machine: he lacked the stillness, the repose of a mechanical object. He was active. He was like a hungry monster that could eat anything you fed it. He gobbled up the problems that were set before him — demolished them and then laughed because no more were provided. Finally, he was classified as a remote student. He worked at home, and his lessons were transmitted to him on a cable — his own channel, his own program. He was granted high school exemption, and this year, aged fifteen, university exemption. He was now doing advanced research in particle physics. He was not boasting — he was too truthful ever to boast, and yet everything he said about himself sounded boastful. Moura was not impressed: she knew the schools had not been able to handle him.

"University exemption!" Hardy said. He was the one who boasted — and he had no cause, and knew it. He was not Fizzy's father.

"They're procrastinating," she said. She was just as wary of his boisterous intelligence; and still she asked: Who is he?

These days she watched him cautiously — for example, unscrewing the lid of a jam jar. He wore gloves, his hands like big broad paddles; he did it under a disinfecting light; he wore a mask. He grunted miserably — these noises meant he was thinking — and he seemed to be sniffing, smelling what he was doing. He moved his lips and wrinkled his nose behind his faceplate. Opening a jam jar! He folded his gloves on the lid and let the light play on it, and jerking one leg back for balance, he struggled until the lid was off. He shrieked when he saw that he had smeared jam on the fingers of one glove, and kept quacking until he had flapped the glove into the trash extractor.

Beside this, what was particle physics? As he had grown older, changing from day to day, he had become less familiar to her. On occasions she regarded him as, if not a threat, then a potential source of danger.

Moura had finished her exercises with a swim in the Coldharbor pool and had come back to her unit feeling refreshed — relaxed and strengthened and, as always after swimming, a few pounds lighter. She looked out and saw the dusty lavender sky of midafternoon, which meant the winter day was ending — the tame skylights would soon be switched on, a whole dome of curved light, making it a city without shadows.

But she preferred it the way it was just now, before the skylights came on — the wide empty streets of winter, few pedestrians, the grinding of the trams, the swarms of tipping rotors with their flicking lights — like fireflies. She loved this shadowy daylight, on the narrow seam between day and night. And it soothed her to know that Hardy would be late. She was planning ahead, allotting the hours to herself. She wanted to call up the figures on some investments she had made, and analyze them as she ate — she enjoyed eating at the console; Hardy never did so himself and hated seeing her do it. She wanted to compute her exercises at the same time — the hours on the machine, and under the lamp, and swimming; and the breakdown of her food figures. It made her feel even better when she saw her effort turned into statistics, because numbers were unalterable and they always seemed in a solid authoritative way like investments. A first-night was being televised at eight, and after that tennis, and she promised herself a long phone call later to Rinka, to fix a day for their outing. By the time Hardy came home looking for sympathy and a listener, she would be ready for him; but she felt free only when she was alone.

She had just seated herself at her console when Security rang — Captain Jennix at his most military, imitating a spaceman. Before she could respond, Fizzy burst out of his room.

"That's for me!" — his elbows raised like a penguin.

It annoyed her that it was for him, a large parcel in the tamperproof wrapper that meant it was classified — about a meter long and rather narrow. She wondered whether it was a weapon — it was rifle-sized, and Fizzy carried it in a certain tough-nervous way, one end of it sticking ahead of him as he pushed toward his room.

His sudden appearance spoiled the rest of the evening for her. She succeeded in ignoring him because she tried hard, and she always returned to what she had convinced herself was an empty unit — not thinking of Fizzy at all, because he never left his room. And then there he was, flapping like a penguin and with the same shuffle-shuffle, full of corrections, big teeth, spiky hair, and holding his head to one side, yanking his door open as the phone went. He had snatched the parcel from Jennix's runner and limped back into his study, which was his whole world, where he sat and squinted at Pap. If that thing was an iron it was the end. It was bad enough that he had become a stranger — but a weapon-freak!

Moura had not been in his room lately, not since the return from O-Zone, just after New Year's. That was a month ago. She resented the thought that Hooper had been admitted: all that whispering that day over the video cartridge.

No, "resented" wasn't right; and not "irritated" or "offended." She wanted, consciously, to have no feelings at all; she wanted to see the boy as clearly as possible. But he was such a little shit and know-it-all, her anger always got in the way.

"Let me in," she said on the phone. "I'd like to talk to you."

"Don't come in here!" This was four quacks.

Maybe he's attracted to you. Some things Holly said were so wrong they could never be offensive. This was actually funny! Holly's obvious lack of perception made her a safe and easy friend. Moura could not bear being observed by an intelligent and critical woman — it was so exhausting, and what was the point? Were you supposed to listen to all their wise questions and give them humble answers? At least Holly let you laugh at her occasionally.